Jim Lauderdale Teams with Grateful Dead Lyricist on the Haunting Headed for the Hills
A restless spirit, country-rocker Jim Lauderdale travels off the beaten path with each new release, assuming many roles and visiting unexpected styles at every juncture. With songs that have been covered by some of the biggest names in country music, including Patty Loveless, George Strait, and George Jones, Lauderdale has tried his hand at bluegrass (on two glorious albums with the legendary Ralph Stanley), roots-rock (with Donna the Buffalo on Wait 'Til Spring), and hard country on solo discs such as The Other Sessions and The Hummingbirds. His latest adventure -- a collaboration with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter -- is another winner. Most of Headed for the Hills boasts an old-time string band feel, its lyrics alternately straightforward and surreal. A clutch of top-notch guest vocalists, including Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Allison Moorer, chime in, and Donna the Buffalo join Lauderdale for the rockin' finale. But the gripping tales spun by Lauderdale and Hunter trump all, evoking the former's deep mountain soul and the latter's poetic vision. On the eve of his national tour with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lauderdale spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's David McGee about his partnership with Hunter and his latest, breathtaking journey.

Barnes & Noble.com: You've known Robert Hunter for a while, and you guys have collaborated on songs in recent years. How did you strike up this relationship?

Jim Lauderdale: When I was doing the first record with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys [I Feel like Singing Today], on a chance I thought, Why not get hold of Robert Hunter? I knew he and Jerry Garcia were big Stanley Brothers fans, with both of their backgrounds in bluegrass. So through a friend of mine I got in touch with Robert and sent him a message asking if he would be interested in sending me some lyrics while I was working on the Ralph record. He did, so I wrote a melody to the lyrics and sent it back to him, and he seemed to like it. So he sent me another set of lyrics. And Ralph liked them. You know, I put a lot of songs in front of Ralph to choose from -- he's pretty tough -- but he liked these. Then Robert sent me another lyric, and I put it on a country record I was working on when I was with RCA. Then I was doing another Ralph record [Lost in the Lonesome Pines], and he sent me some more lyrics, and Robert made a trip to Nashville after that. He hadn't really hung out in Nashville ever.... When he was there for about six weeks or so, we wrote 34 songs, and I demo'd them. I always wanted to make an album of just our stuff together, so I sent him 11 songs last summer and went in the studio with the folks listed on the album and the special guests, and he really seemed to like it. I was just so happy.

B&N.com: In recent years, you've done projects in different styles, but Headed for the Hills is very rustic, except for the last song, "Upside Down," when you bring in Donna the Buffalo. I suppose that Robert's lyrics suggested the ambiance of the record. It's pretty much a string-band album until you get to the last song.

JL: Right. But I don't know what it was that made the melodies and lyrics come out like that. Most of those songs we wrote together do lend themselves to an acoustic treatment, for some reason, and I don't know if something was subconsciously going on with us about that, but they just turned out that way.

B&N.com: Were you a hard-core Deadhead at some point in your life?

JL: I only got to see them once. I was in high school, living in North Carolina, and my roommate was a teacher. He had American Beauty and Workingman's Dead, and I just played them over and over and over. Then got Wake of the Flood after that and the Europe 72 album. I got to see them at Duke University. That was really great. It's funny, but I run into people and tell them I only got to see the Dead once, and they'll say, Oh, yeah, I was at that show. Really wild. I really did and do love them, and am so sad that Jerry's not around.

B&N.com: Robert Hunter's lyrics are always interesting, and always surprise you. One of my favorite lines on the album is in "Sandy Ford," and that is, "I've got a face like Lincoln / If ugly was a crime," and it just trails off after that.

JL: I know. That's one of the most interesting lyrics I've ever heard. And "I've got a disposition sweet as April," in the same song. You know, it just paints such a picture of this guy and his unrequited love for a woman. It just blows my mind how creative Robert is.

B&N.com: "Trashcan Tomcat" is another of those songs you have to listen to again to be sure you heard what you think you heard. It appears to be told from the perspective of an alley cat, hanging out, doesn't have a home, rummaging through garbage, and doing other things that a cat does. And then there's the lyric, "Search among the scraps and tatters of peoples' dreams," and suddenly it's a much deeper song.

JL: [laughs] Yeah -- and "Sift the ash for all that matters," in the same song.

B&N.com: I like "Tales from the Sad Hotel" a lot, too. It's a melancholy song, but there's something extremely beautiful in the way it expresses yearning.

JL: Right, then Allison Moorer -- oh my gosh, she just sings that so great.

B&N.com: You bring her in for three songs on the disc. What do you like about her approach to a song?

JL: I don't know if I can verbalize it. Like other great singers, she really gets the emotion across, and technically, to me, she's just perfect. For me, if somebody can make you feel, whether it's a picker, a singer, or a writer, that's it. It's the feeling.

B&N.com: Going back to the last song on the album, "Upside Down," it's the one that's a bit more produced and has a full, clanging band, Donna the Buffalo, stomping around. Why did you do that one in that style?

JL: Conceptually I had the guests I wanted to have on it, and I was working with Donna the Buffalo in the very early stages of the record I was doing with them. I knew I wanted these guys to be on this album, and to end it with the one electric touch, starting acoustically with just the traces of pedal steel in there, with Bucky Baxter. It was always in my head that that was going to close the album, and I love those guys so much and wanted them on the record. Even though it's an electric song, it's gentle enough that it fits.

B&N.com: You mentioned all the songs you and Robert Hunter have written together. Is there another full-on collaborative effort planned for the future?

JL: Out of those other 34 songs there's some real jewels. I'm gonna be calling on him to do these bluegrass things to help me out on the next record, which I've got about three-quarters done -- I'm saving it for 2005 -- but I might do a double album, with a bluegrass disc and a country disc. But I would love to just start in and do a whole other batch of songs with him, and go through that same process.

May 2004
Browse hundreds of interviews with your favorite artists in our Interview Archive.